I read a fascinating article in The New Yorker yesterday. (Which, having read the magazine weekly for years now, is a sentence that pops out of my mouth pretty frequently.) It’s called “Don’t! The Secret of Self Control,” by Jonah Lehrer. The piece opens with a description of an experiment conducted in the late 1960s, in a nursery school on the campus of Stanford University. In the study, four-year-olds were allowed to choose from an array of treats. The girl in the piece picks a marshmallow (right away I was hooked; I, too, can’t resist those puffed bits of pure sugar). She’s told she can eat the treat now or–if she can hold out for a short while, until the researcher returns to the room–she can have two. Two!

The girl in the opening anecdote sits on her hands, staring at her treat, biding her time in the secure knowledge that waiting will net her a bigger payoff. Lots of kids in the experiment, the researchers found, figured out little tricks to keep themselves from diving into their goodies, from sitting on their hands to turning away from the temptation temporarily. And lots of kids simply…couldn’t. There was no punishment to bailing on the promise of extra treats; those who found they’d rather have the goods now than wait for double stuff later simply rang a bell, whereupon the researcher would come back and they’d get their one marshmallow.

The really interesting bit was that the researchers followed up with these kids (only about 30%, incidentally, fell into what they called the “high delayer” category) for years, and wouldn’t you know it, kids who were able to delay their gratification ended up more successful as adults.

Delayed gratification. Seems like a good thing to learn, right? The question that popped to mind after reading the piece (aside from wondering if I had any marshmallows in the house) was this: Do our kids know how to wait? I thought about my own boys. They’re just little kids, for whom “patience” is not exactly a religion. But still: I realize that teaching patience is an important task, and it can be frustrated by the fact that we live in a pretty impatient, gimme-now world. The fact is, it’s easy to get what we want, when we want it. Stores are always open, so we don’t have that excuse.

I’ve been dealing with some patience issues with my younger boy, James. He’s waaaay more impatient than his big brother. If he calls one of us–say, from his bed at night, wanting his covers fixed or whatever–he’ll actually take us to task if we don’t get there quick enough: “It’s taking a long time!” Part of it, naturally, is a four year old’s poor conception of time. But part of it is patience, which we’re constantly telling him he needs more of. My husband held out the promise of a new toy car if he was good all week, and he now asks for it every single day. No, multiple times a day. (“Are we going to get it now? I was just good!”)

So I started thinking of ways to teach kids to delay gratification. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far, and please–feel free to chime in with your own ideas:

Limit their “treats.” You already know I’m not one of those moms doling out candy and snacks left and right. I really do stick to my guns and save treats for certain times. The boys get a treat after dinner if they’re good at the table. They get a lollipop at the doctor’s office. The fewer and farther between treats are, the more kids are able to wait for them. I call it the “lollipops are not a given” approach.

Make ordinary fun stuff seem extraordinary. When we’re going to go anyplace beyond the everyday (from a friend’s birthday party to a family get-together to a trip to the city), we promote the heck out of it, to make it seem special. What I believe this does: It elevates their experience in such a way that they realize the difference between the everyday (we’re going to school…) and the special (we’re going to Aunt Marie’s for pizza!). In turn, that makes it easier to ask them to wait for fun stuff, the big (a trip to Florida) or small (dinner at the diner).

Just tell ‘em! The thing with the toy car is instructive: It would be so so easy to just throw up my hands, growl at my husband for coming up with the bright idea of getting James a car as a reward, and just get him the darn thing to shut him up. But I don’t. I tell him that being good means being good all week, and that we’ll talk about the car again on Friday. It sets up an endless stream of questions (“Is it Friday this day?” “When is tomorrow?”) which are Kafkaesque with your average four year old, and it wears on my patience, but the down-the-road reward will be (hopefully) a boy who can wait.

7 responses to “The Marshmallow Experiment: Does Your Child Know How to Wait?”

I teach this topic in class a lot and some years ago supervised a group of students who did a senior research project on delay of gratification and collectivism/individualism (e.g., one marshmallow for you now or two for everyone in class later), although unfortunately I don’t remember the outcome. Research suggests that few preschool children can delay gratification more than a few hours, but by age 8 kids can typically wait a day or two and by adolescence much longer, although as you’ve noticed with your boys, there are individual differences based on characteristics of temperament. A big challenge for the little ones is knowing what to do to redirect their attention away from the truck (or marshmallow) while they wait. Often, teaching them effective waiting strategies helps — crossing dates off a calendar, for example.

I read about this in Lise Eliot’s What’s Going On In There? when my six-year-old was a baby. I loved it then, and I love it now. In fact I was so, ahem, curious about my own kid that I tried the experiment on her when she turned four. (She passed.) Now I’m wondering about my second child, now four … Haha. I do a lot of what you do, and in addition I try to make it noticeable when I delay gratification myself. Ideally, they’ll pick up on it.

My three-year-old is going through an extremely impatient phase–doesn’t matter what it is. Waiting for a cup of water? “I’m so THIRSTY I’m DYING of THIRSTY!” Waiting to go to the store? “I’m DYING I’m so BORED I need to GO SOMEWHEA!”

Besides being patient and waiting this phase out, I’ve taken to building in small waits, whether I need to or not, just to flex his “waiting” muscle. So just because I’m in the kitchen that doesn’t mean I’ll get to his snack immediately–especially not if he’s being demanding or bossy. I’ll just remind him that he needs to wait a few minutes, and get it for him in a reasonable amount of time.

Though I do also try to keep in mind that it’s probably pretty frustrating to have to rely on other people to help you do all the things we take for granted–from leaving the house to using the bathroom–so I try not to be TOO much of a hard-ass about it.

There was some follow-up study that showed kids were more likely to defer gratification if they saw a role model doing the same. If memory serves, the role models demonstrated ways to distract themselves from the treat, and the kids picked up on their methods.

[…] with an hour to kill in between. Because I try to space out treats to give them more impact (see my post on the power of delayed gratification, I figured a trip to a fast-food joint, Chicken McNuggets and a Happy Meal would pack a punch (and […]

[…] Rufus Griscom, in the radio chat today (and I’ve been going on so much here that Brian Lehrer’s long moved on from that segment, but check it out if you can), mentioned the famous marshmallow experiment, about how kids who could successfully delay gratification ended up all-around better adults. […]

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Denise Schipani

photo by Mark Bennington Photography

I’ve had the pleasure of collaborating with Denise for more than a decade. Every time I assign her a story I walk away patting myself on the back for making such a great decision. I know that she’ll deliver well-researched, creative copy that captures the tone of the magazine, is reader-friendly, and, above all, imparts new and useful information. In short: she’s the best.

--Debra Witt, Articles Editor, Runner’s World

Denise not only pitches great ideas, I can count on her to deliver pieces with her trademark wit and verve, even when it's a quick turnaround.

--MP Dunleavey, Editor in Chief, DailyWorth.com

For several years, I worked with Denise on her Mommy Confidential column in American Baby. Pregnant women and new moms got her girlfriend-y, spot-on, in-the-trenches advice about everything from playground bullies to intrusive in-laws. Denise is an absolute gem and a pleasure to work with!

--Tricia O'Brien, Features Editor, American Baby

From Denise's essay, Dear Karen

"I'm still upset about the last time I saw you. I know, I know, it was more than a decade ago by now. And it's taken me forever to apologize, but just know that all this time, I've not been pleased with myself because of it. I let you down. I haven't even been to your grave yet, and I can no longer keep making the excuse that I'm here in New York and you're buried way up in Maine, near your parents' cabin and that lovely lake."

From Denise's essay, Like a Rock

"...I understand just enough about geology to know that it takes millions of years for carbon, pressed deep in the earth, to turn into diamonds. And I also know that the same earth that produces the sparkly stones is not so solid. It's on the move all the time, giant plates shifting under foot while we pretend it's safe.."